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Chapter 10: The Heat Beneath the Cold
Last Updated:
2025-04-12 14:49:19
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Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 11: Lies Between the Sheets
For a timeless, gasping moment, they were still.Leya's mouth was still inflated from the kiss—if one could even call it a kiss. It had not been tender. It had been claiming. A collision. A surrender that neither of them would admit to.Harrison's heat remained on her cheek. His hands remained on her hips, whether he didn't know if he should pull her into him… or push her away from him.It was he who finally spoke."You were never meant to read that letter."Leya's fists were bunched up. "Then maybe you should have incinerated it yourself."He released a brusque, guttural laugh, falling back and playing with his hair. His chest labored and collapsed against the unbuttoned collar of his shirt, which still felt ruffled from her hands."I couldn't," he growled.Why? she asked. "What is frightening about the threat of a dead man?"Harrison held the bar. Filled a glass but didn't drink. Stood there looking at the amber liquid as if it would somehow give him strength."You want the truth, L
Last Updated : 2025-04-18Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 12: Thorns in Velvet
The bedroom door slammed shut behind Leya with a cold, unforgiving clang.She leaned back against the hallway her chest thudding in her ears. Her father was in jail. Her life had been bought. Samuel's lies went deeper than she'd known—and Harrison knew them. Not all of them, perhaps, but enough to send him to prison.And now there was another.Someone Samuel had feared.A woman who might very well still be within, even.She hadn't let her fury get the upper hand on her, though. Not yet. She insisted on answers—and her mother was going to provide them to her.But as she spun, turning to ascend the stairs, the stile slid back down the marble behind her. Leya didn't need to turn. She already knew.Eleanor.Particularly, for that so-smooth voice that was finer than had ever uttered. "Entertaining," the voice declared, "when something is amiss in this house, I catch you hanging around."Leya turned on purpose. Eleanor stood like a statue sculpted out of poison and ice. Everything about her
Last Updated : 2025-04-18Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 13: The Price of Her Silence
The sun was still below the roofs of Rome, but Leya was already up in a black jacket and black jeans, eyes colder than the chilling air seeping down her cheeks. She did not wait for dawn. Not any longer for truth.She stood before the rented apartment of the Andersons, the apartment where her mother had moved them after her dad's "accident."And now, with the truth burning in her heart and Samuel's ghostly whisper spitting into the void, she was not present here as a daughter.She was present here as a tempest.Her knuckles pounded out on the door.There was nothing. And then hesitant footsteps. And the groan of the open door—her mother's lined, creased face."Leya?" her mother asked, belting her robe around her to tie herself together."Tonight, you come here late as if this place belongs to you?"Leya didn't resent being sent out. She climbed onto her, bursting in with the seethed rage.Her mother gently closed the door behind her. "Sweetheart, what is it?"Leya turned again, this t
Last Updated : 2025-04-18Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 14: Under the Ashes
Leya departed in silence from her mother's flat. The Roman streets slumbered half-awake, the sky bruised by the heaviness of a sun yet to rise. Her boots created soft reverberations on the pavement as she walked—no direction, no destination.She needed to think.To breathe.Her father had given his life to protect something. Someone. A woman, a fund, a secret so explosive that it had pushed a man like Samuel Blackwood, a man with the power to kill with words, to fake his own death and conceal the evidence in a wax-sealed document.And now it was hers.Her mother's words reverberated in her mind:"He said to her if the truth came out… it would destroy everything."She looked at the letter again. The burned edges. The cut-off sentence.".If they find out who you are—"Who was she?Not just a wife.Not just a daughter.There was something in her blood—something buried in her family tree—that made everyone either wanting to control her… or murder her.Her hands shook.She needed that miss
Last Updated : 2025-04-18Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 15: Power Is a Woman's Silence Breaking
Harrison slumped over the ruin of his study desk, elbows rolled up tight, waves of tension rolling from him as he glared at the flash drive as if it would, all of a sudden, spring to life and blow his head to kingdom come.It wasn't the technology sucking the life from him.It was her.How she'd stared at him the previous evening—blinding, searing, heavy. As though she could see all her hypocrisy reflected in him. As though she no longer required him to cover for her.He fumed with anger at the way it belittled him.He fumed even more at realizing he was no longer the deadliest man in the room.The knock was hesitant. Not frightened.Weighing.Harrison stayed awake in bed as the door creaked open.And there she was.Leya.Midnight-blue jeans cinched around buffed, rosy cheeks, hair back like a woman who'd been somewhere she wasn't even allowed to be and survived—but won.And hanging on her arm—the letter.He saw it as soon as he did. Recognized the crest of Samuel's letterhead like a
Last Updated : 2025-04-18Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 16: When the Queen Rose
Leya did not sleep.Not because she could not.Because she would not.Sleep was for the blissfully ignorant who still believed they were safe.She leaned over her bed desk, reclining in its cozy corner indentation—Samuel's letter, the key, and a full reproduction of the marriage contract spread out before her like war tactics on a battle map.The house was quiet. But her head was at war.She then gripped the truth.But the truth did not rescue people in this family. It rather buried them.And Eleanor?She'd bled.She'd moved first.Leya's fingers followed the stitches of a scar on her wrist. A reminder. Of where things began to go wrong. Of the day she had first refused to let the Blackwoods get their way.---Three Weeks Ago — The Morning It All SnappedIt was an accident.Leya was carrying a water tray down the hallway, attempting to circumvent Eleanor—because Eleanor had this odd sort of talent to find herself in the position where humiliation would sting the hardest.She rounded t
Last Updated : 2025-04-18Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 17: When Queens Don't Seize Thrones—They Set Traps
Leya did not utter a single word when she walked out of that banquet hall. No victory speech. No "I told you so." No drama in asserting her throne. She left them simmering in their silence—the most lethal poison in the room. For what was more poisonous than a woman getting a grip? A woman who could get a grip… but did not. Not yet. The room reconfigured itself the moment she left it. Vivian had been holding the rim of her wineglass so hard it had broken in her hand. "She thinks she's above the law," she despised. Eleanor didn't jump, her eyes moving from the folder on the coffee table to Harrison—who didn't jump either. "She has everything, Mother." "No," Vivian despised. "She has power. They're not the same things." "To come and tell. Officially tell. It will kill us—" "She hasn't said a word outside these walls," Vivian sat up on the couch, her voice resentful. "And until then, she's bluffing. But before that." Eleanor leaned to one side and tipped her head bac
Last Updated : 2025-04-19Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 18: Behind the Smile
Nathaniel looked down at the burner phone his fingers held.The text cut through him.> "It's time to talk."Leya.He breathed slowly, shoving back from the edge of the bar, pulling on his hair with his fingers. City lights late at night glow in front of the penthouse windows of the high-end club, but he was already lost in his head.She was not afraid.He had once appreciated that. Respect had boundaries, and Leya had gone beyond all of them.He weighed his options.> Don't pull me into this. I warned you once.I owe my family.Deleted the last two lines.Typed them back in.> You're no victim, Leya. You're a gold digger who would put glory on ashes. Your word means nothing to anyone where the Blackwoods hold court.Sent it.Cold. Done.He pushed the phone into his pocket and finished the remainder of his scotch.---Later That Night – Blackwood MansionTentative knock on Leya's apartment door. No.Not tentative at all.Barbaric.She leaped, stood up, and pinched her heart.Not Vivia
Last Updated : 2025-04-19
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Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 57: The Walls Remember Everything
---Blackwood Mansion – One Hour Before MidnightMost of the mansion slept.But Leya woke up.Quietly. Barefoot. With one candle's light in her hand.The tile chill bit at her toes, walking by the portraits whose eyes followed her, by the grandfather clock that had lost its sense of time decades ago. Her own steps were slow and careful, as if the walls of the house would wake up and ring out an alarm to wake the others.The silence in the house was not peace.It was a facade for danger.She stood at the end of the hallway—the one that curved around the servants' pantry and into the wall no one ever challenged. It was a dead end on every map she had ever studied.To her,For in Blackwood Mansion, dead ends were secrets that had perfected the art of seeming to be doors.She jammed her hand against the fretted lion's face on the weathered face of the old grandfather clock. Its cracked face warped slightly under pressure.> Click.There was a soft hiss of trapped breath within.And the pa
Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 56: A Cage of Their Own Making
Two Months Ago — Samuel Blackwood's Private StudyThe fire in the hearth was too smoldering to warm the room, but it flared up fiercely in the iron grill with a bad will-a good bad will, as all the rest of the Blackwood house.Harrison stood stiff before it, shoulders squared, jaw locked tight enough to ache."I don't need a wife," he said again, as if the repetition would tilt the ground under his feet.Samuel didn't even look up at the decanter of brandy. "You don't need a wife. You need a legacy."He poured the drink into crystal—measured, controlled. A performance, not a pour.Harrison laughed. "And this is your concept of legacy? Marriage to some desperate nobody so I can impress the board?"No, Samuel spoke softly, putting down the decanter on the side table with a snap. "This is my idea of pruning."Harrison's eyes widened. "I beg your pardon?""You've been flowering like a weed, boy. Playing as if inheritance were heredity by blood. But blood will not buy land. Discipline will
Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 55: The Quiet Rebellion
Blackwood Estate — MorningThe sun rose as the sun had risen previously—its light filtering through leaded glass windows, flowing over gold trim and old frames. But the warmth never reached the opposite side of the house.Not to where Leya was, in bare feet on a cold kitchen floor at 5:03 a.m., elbow-deep in soapy water.She'd risen early, before the birds broke day. Her day started before sunup and late in the moonlight that poured on the walls of stone.She worked quietly, the sounds nothing more than clinking dishes and the whistling steam that popped off the stove.Vivian had addressed her so bluntly only three days before:> "You're no longer served here. You serve."And so she did.Because the contract that held her in line did not merely address her as Harrison's wife.It addressed her as the guardian of her family.Two months before, Samuel Blackwood had written a check large enough to hush the wolves barking outside her mother's front porch. Her family's $300,000 debt had van
Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 54: A Cage of Their Own Making
Two Months Ago — Samuel Blackwood's Private StudyThere hadn't been one of those yelling, yelling storms in the weather that night, but there was a storm in Samuel Blackwood's study: live, with promise of hidden harm and weight-laden decision.Harrison stiffened before the fire, hands locked across chest, jaw bunched."I don't need a wife," he snarled."You need discipline," Samuel said, not raising his eyes.He poured metallic brandy into a crystal glass. The same glass he used whenever he was signing terms—never to accept them."And what is she?" Harrison sneered. "A leash?""No," Samuel replied. "She's a mirror."Harrison's eyebrows collapsed."Of what?""How about what happens to you when you wield power as a right and not a duty?"The fire spat. The air froze.Samuel turned around, his hand closed around a piece of paper. Thick paper. Blackwood seal. Older binding legal than both of them."The marriage contract for one year. She gets protection. You get the share of the estate yo
Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 53: The House She Never Chose
The house never slept.It loomed over them.Even resting, it gasped like a beast, cold and warm in the wrong spots. Creaking at joints. Glaring at them.Leya no longer jumped at its creaks.She was too tired to.Her mop had been wet, pale water in the bucket she had carried down the marble corridor. Her back ached. Her knees pounded. The insidious burn of ammonia stuck to her forearms like something that she couldn't shake off.She had washed the baseboards. Sconces covered in gilt moldings that no one so much as glimpsed. Boiling cabbage and eggs for Eleanor's first breakfast in the dark early morning, and filling Vivian's mug from bent head and shaking hands,, which had not relaxed since the third washing.> And no one ever had dared face her.For she was no longer mistress in the house.She was its shadow.It's cleaner. It's chef. It's a ghost.She hadn't complained.She couldn't.---Flashback – Two Months EarlierShe could still hear the tone of her mother's voice when the envelo
Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 52: No Crown Is Given Twice
The house remained silent. But utterly differently. This was a different sort of silence. One that felt… intentional. As though the very quietness had been orchestrated—like flowers at a funeral. Leya leaned against the railing at the end of the second-floor hall, squeezing out a dripping rag along the banister. Water dripped down the oaken rails, tapping the marble below it like a metronome. She no longer felt the jaggedness of her spine. Or perhaps the scent of bleach was still in her fingernails. All she could feel was shadows. Stationary chairs. Rumbled rugs. Open books on tables that no one was going to take the trouble to pick up. > She was being watched. But this time, as opposed to the first, they weren't intimidating her with power. They were watching her to see if she'd break. If the shame would at last take root. If the mask slips. Leya smiled to herself as she buffed a brass doorknob until it shone. Let them watch. She had learned as a child how to become
Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 51: The Servant's Silence
The bell rang.Not the ring of breakfast in the east dining room. Not the soft rustle of linens and silver spoons.This was the servant's bell.Cold. Hard. Cruel.It rang at six-fifteen every morning. Before birds fluttered. Before lightening the curtains. Before the family even stirred in their beds.This morning, it rang for her.Leya did not move.She was already awake.Already wearing a grimy apron and loose filthy brown dress. Too tight around the arms and too loose around the waist.There were no dresses left. There were no laces to fasten, no silk.They had been taken.Off her closet floor where she had been sleeping.Instead, stiffened fabric and a crumpled piece of paper in pretty script:"No maid will be sent to assist you anymore. You are to do all the regular housework of the caretaker of this home. That is floors, washing, bedroom, and west garden. – Vivian Blackwood"No battle.No conflict.No voice redefining.She had been dismantled quietly.Gone, as ink from the page.
Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 50: Under Every Floorboard (Part II)
Night threw its dark shadows over the east windows, staining the walls of the mansion with bruises of dying light. The halls were too quiet. Again. Leya had grown accustomed to hearing differently now—not to the noises, but to silences. And there was a new one following behind every door she walked through. A silence with teeth. She remembered it most clearly when she was summoned—not by Harrison, not by Eleanor—but by Vivian herself. Diplomatic knock on the Leya door. Not Clara. One of the other domestics. Downtrod head. "Miss Vivian wishes to see in the garden parlor." Leya did not hesitate. She stored the crumpled-up piece of paper she had discovered in an envelope and stored the envelope under a lifted floorboard and walked quietly to where she lay in concealment. She didn't possess the phone. She didn't require it. Not today. --- Garden Parlor – Just After Dusk Vivian posed in front of the French doors, bone-colored robe, bony waist cinched tightly
Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 49: Under Every Floorboard
The house whispered differently now.There was something in the air. Something that had slept but had opened its eyes.Leya could feel it each time her bare feet touched the shining floor.Each time her fingertips touched the banisters.Each time her eyes met a servant's and stayed one second too long.She was being watched.But not all eyes were unfriendly anymore.Some were curious.Some were scared.And one set… had saved her life.No word was spoken, though. Silences like gold and worth more than lies here.---Leya's Room – MorningShe was sitting by the window, lap full of notebook, fingers clasped around the pen.She was not writing. Not yet.She was thinking.Joining up.Relating.The Clara visit. The note on the door. The fares are tucked away. Nathaniel's refusal of everything. Harrison's rage. The whisper down the corridor.And most of all—The silence.The ominous silence which had descended upon the house since Harrison's outburst.Vivian hadn't summoned her in.Eleanor h
